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SPEECH 



JOHN WINGATE THORNTON, ESQ.^ 



FORT POPHAM CELEBRATION, 



AUGUST 39, 1863, 



UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 



MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 




BOSTON: 

PRINTED BY EDWARD L. BALCH, 34 SCHOOL STREET. 

1863. 



^•b 



«•>« i 



T-:\ 



SPEECH. 



Mr. Thornton was invited to respond 
to the following sentiment : 

The Saco — The home of Vines and his 
companions in 1616, and the first seat of 
Justice, in which the forms of the common 
law were put into practice. 

Mr, President and Gentlemen of the Maine His- 
torical Society : 

The present might at first seem peculiar- 
ly unseasonable for an occasion like this, 
but a recurrence to the history of our po- 
litical institutions, is ever worthy of wise 
and prudent men, and never before have 
such investigations been so forced upon 
our attention as now, when the nation is 
struggling for its very life, and every man 
seeks for the cause and cure of our na- 
tional calamity. 

The occasion, and the sentiment to 
which I have the honor to respond, natural- 
ly lead to inquiry into the political views 
and designs of Sir Ferdinando Gorges 
and his associates, as developed in their 
colonial schemes, the true character of 
their enterprises, and the latent causes of 
their failure, rather than into local details. 
Happily Sir Ferdinando has left in his 
" Briefe Narration " a condensed and lucid 
statement,' of the most authentic character, 
for he wrote of events and persons within 
his own knowledge ; his book is a retro- 
spect of his own labors, of an earnest life, 
of which one of his own sentences furnishes 
an epitome : " What can be more pleasing 
to a generous nature," he says, " than to be 
exercised in doing public good ? Espe- 
cially when his labour and industry tend to 
the private good and reputation of himself^ 

1 See note A. • Note B. 



and his posterity ; and what monument so 
durable as the erection of houses, villages, 
and towns ? " 

The shores of New England were first 
pressed by the feet of English voyagers, 
not till some twenty years after Sir Hum- 
phrey Gilbert took formal possession in 
the new world, by turf and twig, for the 
crown of England. It was under the 
patronage of the friend of Shakspeare, 
Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southamp- 
ton, of whom Gorges said, " I was not will- 
ing in those days to undertake any matter 
extraordinary without his Lordship's ad- 
vice," that Bartholomew Gosnold, in 1602, 
attempted a plantation on " Elizabeth Is- 
land." This FIRST ^ attempt at English 
Colonization * on the shores of New Eng- 
land, productive of the most important 
results, was the occasion of this second 
and disastrous^ enterprise by Popham 
and Gorges, which we now celebrate. 

Not an Englishman was then to be 
found in all North America except the 
visitors on this spot, and those under 
President Wingfield just landed at James- 
town, the first permanent colony in the 
South. 

The idea of founding a state has grand- 
eur and dignity, but "the reasons" as- 
signed by Gorges himself, for this attempt 
at colonizing wholly fail of these qualities. 
He says that by the peace which ensued 
between England and Spain on the ac- 
cession of James of Scotland to the throne 
of England, " Our Men of war by Sea 
and Land were left destitute of all hope 



s Note C. 



1 Note D. 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



of employment under their owne Prince ; 
And tlierefore there was liberty given to 
them, (/or preventing other evils) to be 
entertained as mercenaries under what 
Prince or State they pleased," but, says 
Gorges, " howsoever reasons of State ap- 
proved thereof, the World forbore not to 
censure it." The State was burdened 
by these idle warlike people who "love 
danger better than travail ; " some of them 
touched with the popular delusion that all 
America was full of gold and silver, were 
inclined to adventures in the New World, 
and this is the "reason" assigned by 
Gorges for "renewing the undertakings 
of Plantations in America" as planned by 
Sir Humphrey Gilbert. 

The fact is not flattering, yet Sir Fer- 
dinando wrote of his personal knowledge, 
his statement is corroborated by all the 
contemporary authorities, and it is spe- 
cially verified by an early biographer 
of Chief Justice Popham, who says that 
" he not only punished malefactors,* but 
provided for them, and first set up the dis- 
covery of New England to maintain and 
employ those that could not live honestly 
in the Old." The character of the colo- 
nists as handed down to us by the local 
historians, especially by Williamson, do 
not discredit the statements of Gorges and 
Lloyd, the biographer of Popham : indeed 
one of the real objects of the scheme," and 
the immediate cause of its abandonment, 
was no doubt given by Strachey when he 
says " there were no mynes discovered, nor 
hope thereof, being the mayne intended 
henefit expected to uphold the charge of 
the plantacion." 

The enterprise was invested with all 
the material^ strength which wealth and 
hope of gain could devise. There seems 
to have been no physical defect, and we 
must look to the " inward bruise " for the 

*Iii his poetical epistle " to Ben. Johnson, 6 Jan. 
1603," Dr. John Donne shows the distinctive fame of 
the Chief Justice at that period : — 

" And when I true friendship end, 
With guilty conscience let me be worse stung 
Then with Popham's sentence theeves, or Cook's, 
Traitors are." [tongue, 

JDonne''s " Poems,'" Savoy, 1669, p- 197. 
6 Note P. ' Note G. 



latent' causes of its almost inevitable 
failure. 

One member of the Virginia Company 
scanned these proceedings with the eye 
of a philosopher, and recorded his obser- 
vations in one of his famous " Essays," 
that " Of Plantations " : 

" It is a shameful and unblessed thing 
to take the scum of people, and wicked 
and condemned men, to be the people 
with whom you plant ; and not only so, 
but it spoileth the plantation, for they will 
ever live like rogues, and not fall to work, 
but be lazy, and do mischief, and spend 
victuals, and be quickly weary, and then 
certify over to their country to the dis- 
credit of the plantation. The people 
wherewith you plant ought to be gardners, 

ploughmen, but moil not too much 

underground, /oc the hope of mines is very 
uncertain, and useth to make the plant- 
ers lazy in other things." And " if you 
plant where savages are, do not only en- 
tertain them with trifles and gingles, hut 
use them graciously and justly." 

Judge Popham is now remembered ' in 
England as an associate with Whitgift 
in his sanguinary persecutions, espe- 
cially by his signature, in 1593, to the 
death warrant of Penry, one of the noble 
army of martyrs to civil and religious lib- 
erty, but he has an unhappy eminence with 
that great man. Sir Walter Kaleigh, for, 
says the historian Graham, in his account 
of this colony of Sagadehoc, he " had three 
years before, presided with scandalous in- 
justice at the trial of Raleigh, and con- 
demned to the death of a traitor the man 
to whom both England and America were 
so greatly indebted." " 

It is manifest from these antecedents 
that he was not troubled with any schemes 
for civil or religious liberty in America, 
or elsewhere, and that " cases of con- 
science," or scruples about " forms," or 
danger of " thinking beyond the rules," 
would not disturb his colonists. So closed 
the first chapter in Sir Ferdinando Gorges' 
experience. 

The failure of Popham's experiment, 
and the ill reports of the colonists, discour- 
aged " the spirit of colonization, and from 

8 Note H. 5 Note I. i" Note J. n Note K. 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



that time the Company confined their ope- 
rations to a few fishing voyages. Capt. 
John Smith, the greatest name in New 
England discovery, visited the coasts, 
and published maps and accounts of the 
country. But we learn from Sir Ferdi- 
nando's " Narrative," that it was at last 
represented to the Company, doubtless by 
himself, " how necessary it was that means 
be used to draw into those enterprises 
some of those families that had retired 
themselves into Holland for scruples of 
conscience,-'^ giving them such freedom 
and liberty as might stand with their 
likings." 

They had fled to Holland to escape the 
fate of Penry at the hands of Whitgift 
and Popham. In the parliament of 1592- 
3, on the motion of the bishops to make it 
" felony to maintain any opinions against 
the ecclesiastical government," Sir Walter 
Raleigh said, " In my conceit the Brown- 
ists are worthy to be rooted out of a Com- 
monwealth. But what danger may grow 
to ourselves if this law pass, it were fit to 
be considered. For it is to be feared 
men not guilty will be included in it. 
And that law is hard that takelh life and 
sendeth into banishment ; where men's in- 
ienft'ons shall be judged by a jury," [packed 
by the government,] " and they shall be 
judges what another means. . .If two or 
three thousand Brownists meet at the sea, 
at whose charge shall they he transported, 
or whither toill you send them ? I am 
sorry for it, I am afraid there is near 
twenty thousand of them in England; and 
when they begone, who shall maintain 
their wives and children." 

It seems to be retributive justice, that 
Gorges and his associates should be com- 
pelled to solicit the aid of these very men, 
and that to them should be given by Prov- 
idence the lofty position of pioneers in 
American constitutional liberty, when sor- 
did and unworthy motives had failed. 

The Pilgrims at last yielded to the 
urgent solicitations of members of the 
Great Plymouth Company, and in the 



winter of 1620, the " May Flower" found 
shelter within Gosnold's " Cape Cod." 

This little company made, as Gorges 
described it, a "descent" within their ter- 
ritorial limits. More than half their num- 
ber were women and children, the story 
of their sufi'erings is familiar to all, but 
they accomplished what Chief Justice 
Popham and all the organized force of 
England could not. 

Gorges indulges in many reflections 
upon the successful colonization by the 
Pilgrims ; as " how great and wonderful 
things are oftentimes accomplished by the 
least and weakest means," and " the hap- 
py success of those that are their own 
stewards and disposers of their own af- 
fairs," in contrast ioith his own experience, 
for he says, " I found it no mean matter 
to procure any to go thither, much less to 
reside there ; and those 1 sent kneiv not 
how to subsist but on provisions I furnished 
them loithal" Again he writes that " the 
liberty they [the Pilgrims] obtained thereby, 
and the report of their doing well, drew 
after them multitudes," "great swarms," 
" so that what I long before prophesied, 
when I could hardly get any for money to 
reside there, was now brought to pass." * 

There is a pleasing tradition that Ply- 
mouth Rock was first pressed by the feet 
of woman, the pioneer of our colonization, 
the central figure in the Christian home ; 
her gentle presence was a surer pledge of 
success than were the stalwart soldiers 
under Popham's charge. Contrast with 
this the social policy, if any there was,^ 
at Fort St. George, and at Jamestown. 
" When the plantation grows to strength," 
Lord Bacon advises, " then it is time to plant 
with women as zvell as men ; " in that same 
year 1620, and afterwards, cargoes of 
young women were exported to Virginia, 
and sold for wives, at a hundred and fifty 

* An admirable " retrospect of the causes which 
rendered the first settlements in Massachusetts and 
Connecticut eminently successful, while the numer- 
ous attempts to settle Maine so generally proved abor- 
tive," by Robert Hallowell Gardiner, Esq., is in the 
Maine Hist. Coll. ii., 269—274:; see also p. 38, and 
T., 226, 227, 233-2i2. 

13 Note F. 



6 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



pounds of tobacco each, the debt for a wife 
having priority over all other claims ! 

The Pilgrims -were a religious, high- 
minded people, on a religious errand, to 
erect a Christian Commonwealth. In 
their negotiations in England, preparatory 
to the enterprise, their agents represented 
them " as an industrious and frugal peo- 
ple. . .well weaned from the milk of their 
mother country, and enured to the diffi- 
culties of a strange and hard land which 
yet in great parte they have by patience 
overcome : that they were hnt together in 
a strict and sacred bond, hy virtue of which 
they held themselves hound to take care of 
the good of each other and of the whole, 
and that it was not with them as with 
other men, whom small things could dis- 
courage, or cause to wish themselves at 
home again ; . . . a great hope and inward 
zeal they had of laying some good founda- 
tion, or at least to make some way there- 
unto, for the propagating the gospel of the 
kingdom of Christ in those remote parts 
of the world ; yea, though they should be 
but even as stepping-stones unto others for 
the performing of so great a work." 
When ready to embark from Southampton, 
for America, in August, 1620, Weston, 
their agent, refusing to disburse even a 
penny for them, they wrote, " we are in 
such a strait at present, as we are forced 
to sell away sixty pounds' worth of our 
provisions to clear the Haven, and with- 
all put ourselves upon great extremities, 
scarce having any butter, no oil, not a 
sole to mend a shoe, nor every man a 
sword to his side," destitute of many of 
the commonest comforts of life, " yet," say 
they, " we are willing to expose ourselves 
to such eminent dangers as are like to en- 
sue, and trust to the good providence of 
God, rather than his name and truth 
should be evil spoken of for us." (Brad- 
ford, 22—27, 61—63.) The comparison 
which Gorges himself institutes between 
the Plymouth colonists and his own de- 
pendent, hired, servants, finely illustrates 
the remark of John Stuart Mill, that 
" one person with a helief, is a social 



power equal to ninety-nine who have only 
interests." 

Here, Mr. President, I beg your indul- 
gence to dwell for a moment on the char- 
acter of one eminently worthy of special 
commemoration as a representative man 
in the Colonial period of Maine. I refer 
to Rev. Robert Jordan, of Spurwink, 
who, as a pioneer of the Church of Eng- 
land, of which he was a most loyal sub- 
ject, as a large and very influential land- 
ed proprietor, with views nearly coinci- 
dent with those of Gorges, and as a 
man of commanding position and energy, 
during a long life in the conflicts and 
vicissitudes which distinguish Maine, as 
the field where hostile social and political 
theories were on trial, stands out in fuller 
relief than any of his associates. A me- 
moir of his life and times, in which he was 
the central figure, presenting an enlarged 
and philosophical view of the conflicting 
elements then at work, would be a volume 
of rare interest, and as every memoir 
should be written by one in sympathy 
with his subject, I beg leave to suggest it 
as a theme peculiarly appropriate for the 
pen of the hero's ecclesiastical brother, 
our accomplished Secretary. 

At Sagadehoc disappointed hopes of 
gain, and unmanly fear, lowered the red 
cross flag of St. George, and the well 
supplied ships of relief returned to Eng- 
land freighted with stories of suffering " 
from the lips of strong men ; at Plymouth, 
where more than half the number were 
women and children, and where the spring 
showers fell upon the graves of their 
governor and more than half their com- 
pany, there was not one weak heart. They 

"joined in the morning prayer, and in the read- 
ing of Scripture, 

And in liaste went hurrying down to the sea- 
shore, 

Down to the Plymouth Kock, that had been to their 
feet as a door-step 

Into a world unknown — the corner-stone of a nation i 

" Lost in the sound of the oars was the last farewell 

of the Pilgrims. 
strong hearts and true ! not one went back in the 

May Flower ! 
No, not one looked back who had set his hand to this 

ploughing." Longfellow. 

H Note Q. 



CohnM Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



Passing Sir Ferdinando's attempt, un- 
der the patronage of the Council of Ply- 
mouth in 1623, to introduce his son Robert 
as Governor General of New England, and 
Kev. Mr. Morrell as Bishop, — the fruits 
of which were an elegant Latin poem by- 
Mr. Morrell, and a comic passage in Hudi- 
bras ; passing also the absolute power con- 
ferred on archbishop Laud, over New 
England in 1635, both of which ''^ demon- 
strate Gorges' repugnance to the Puritan 
idea of self-government, we come to the 
Koyal Grant of 1 649, by which he was cre- 
ated " Lord and owner of the Province of 
Mayne in New England," under which, 
it is said, " the forms of common law were 
put in practice." This patent styles Gorges 
and his heirs " true and absolute lords* 
and proprietors " of the immense territory 
granted; by it he was to establish the 
Church of England ritual and government, 
" with as much convenient speed as may 
be ; " he had exclusive authority to create 
courts, commission and remove at his 
pleasure all officers, to " execute martial 
law," to make all laws and ordinances, 
" to be inviolably observed," to levy tolls 
or duties at his own sovereign pleasure, 
" without any account " thereof, even to 
the king, and the oath of office was " to 
my lord of the Province of Mayne." '° 

In true regal style he appoints " my well 
beloved cousin Thomas Gorges, Esq., 
Richard Vines, Esq., my servant and 
steward General, Henry Joselin, Esq., 
Francis Champernoon, Esq., my loving 
nephew, Richard Bonnython, William 
Hooke, and Edward Godfrey, Esqs., to be 
my councellors for the due execution of 
Justice in such manner and form as by 

lo Hubbard''s Hist, of New Eng,^ Oiap. xv., ssxvi. 
Brad/ord^s Flymoutk, pp. 148-154. Hudibras^ Part 
ii., Canto ii., lines 403 — 440. Morton^s Memarialj 
Bavis' Ed., pp. 108-9. Hutchinson, i., 440—442. 

* Contrast with this odious, serf-like tenure, the 
jubilant letter of a " New Plimouth " man, in 1621. 
" Wee are all Free-holders ; the Rent-day doth not 
trouble us " ! PurcAos' Filgrims, iv., 1840. Hazard, 
i; 120. 

16 The Grant, given at length in Sullivan^s Maine., 
397 — 408, will be profitable reading for any unhappy 
man who afEects sympathy with the deas of Gorges 
and Popham. 



my subscribed ordinances is directed 
made, established and ordained by me Sir 
Ferdinando Gorges, Knight, lord and 
proprietor of the Province of Mayne." 

Here was not a vestige of civil or reli- 
gious liberty ; the system was based upon 
the doctrine declared by the University 
of Oxford, upon the day of execution of 
the patriot Russell, " submission and obe- 
dience, clear, absolute, and without excep- 
tion, the badge and character of the 
Church of England." The design was to 
plant in New England that system of 
mental and political enslavement which 
was the one thought of the Stuart dynasty, 
the scorn of our age, and of all future 
times ; and banished, as Hume and Ma- 
caulay tell us, by the Pyms, the Hamp- 
dens, CromweUs, Sydneys, and RusseUs, 
the Men, the Puritans, of England. 

Now let us turn for a moment to a dif- 
ferent plan of society and government, as 
developed by the venerable Robinson in 
his letter to the Leyden Pilgrims, on their 
departure from the old world for the new : 

" Whereas you are to become a body 
politic,^ using amongst yourselves civil 
government, and are not furnished with 
any persons of special eminence above 
the rest, to be chosen by you into office 
of government, let your wisdom and god- 
liness appear, not only in choosing such 
persons as do entirely love and will pro- 
mote the common good, but also in yield- 
ing unto them all the honor and obedience 
in the lawful ministrations ; not beholding 
in them the ordinariness of their persons, 
but God's ordinances for your good, not 
being like the foolish multitude who more 

t A learned and able writer not in sympathy with 
the Republic, but of extreme " Church " and Tory 
Tiews, says that " to ascribe to Washington, Franklin, 
Jefferson, or Adams, and their contemporaries, the 
whole merit of the invention and erection of that 
wonderful republic [of the United States] would be to 
rob the early planters of Massachusetts of their well 
earned fame. . . .a republic de facto was first formed 
at Plymouth, in 1620. .. .It is in the annals of these 
first republics of New England that we must trace 
the origin and history of almost every institution now 
existing in the United States. . . .We are struck with 
astonishment at the knowledge and consummate 
skill they displayed in laying the foundations of their 
political fabric." — Halliburton's " Rule and Misruit 
in America," New York, 1861, pp. 16—19. 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



honor the gay coat, ttan either the •virtu- 
ous mind of the man, or glorious ordinance 
of the Lord. But you know better things, 
and that the image of the Lord's power 
and authority which the magistrate bear- 
eth is honorable, in how mean soever per- 
sons. And this duty you both may the 
more willingly and ought the more con- 
scionably to perform, because yovi are at 
least for the present to have only them for 
your ordinary governors, which yourselves 
shall make choice of for that work." " 

In this spirit the Pilgrims held tlieir 
town meetings, the institution from which 
the philosophic De Tocqueville deduced '* 
our free civil polity ; it is the spirit of 
Christian brotherhood taught in our Sa- 
viour's prayer ; it is the practice of the 
grand, broad truth, taught by our Lord 
in his discourse on the Sabbath, that 
institutions are made for man, and 
not man for them ; it is the doctrine in 
which " WE the people of the United 
States," " WE the people of Maine," and 
of every free state, have devised and 
adopted our several Constitutions; it is 
the doctrine declared in our glorious 
Declaration of Independence, not a " glit- 
tering and sounding generality," but a 
Christian truth in which is the only hope 
of humanity, in the systematic violation 
of which we may find the sole cause 
of, and in the restoration of which, we 
shall find the sole remedy for, our present 
national calamity. 

Have we not reason, Mr. President, in 
this review, to lift up our hearts with 
devout gratitude to Almighty God, that 
by his Providence the founding of our in- 
stitutions was left to nobler men, with no- 
bler thoughts — to the English Puritans — 
the chief of men — whom it is " the paltry 
fashion of this day to decry, who divided 
their inheritance between them in the 
reign of Charles I. ; one body remaining 
at home, and establishing the English 
Constitution : one crossing the Atlantic, 
and founding the American Republic — 
the two greatest achievements of modern 
times." 

II Bradford^ 6i— 67. 

18 Democracy in America^ cbap. v. 



NOTES. 
[Notes and Authorities appended as proofs (some 
of the foregoing statements having been questioned) 
indispensable to a fnll and exact Itnowledge of the 
peculiarly interesting nature of Chief Justice Pop- 
ham's colonial plans, and subservient to the objects 
of the Maine Historical Society, aa '* tending to 
explain and illustrate the civil, ecclesiastical, and 
natural history of this State, and the United States," 
and under whose auspices the '* Public Historical 
Celebration" at ''Fort Popham" was announced. 
If any of the facts seem novel, and have been, for 
any reason, *' overlooked by Puritan writers and 
those who follow their authority," yet they seem to 
be well established by Gorges, Alexander, Lloyd, 
Fuller, Bacon, Aubrey, Strachey, and other writers, 
less prejudiced perhaps, certainly not Puritans, and 
are submitted as " essential to the vindication of the 
truth of history."] 

A.— p. 3. 
Gorges " wrote of events and persons within 
his own knowledge," yet he does not even 
allude to Gosnold's voyage of 1602, the first 
attempt at English Colonization in " North 
Virginia," nor once refer to Capt. John Smith, 
the great name and authority in such matters ; 
nor does he escape grave error even in things 
circumstantially related as Ivnown to himself; 
for instance he says, {Maine Hist. Coll., ii. 
21, 22,) of the news from the Colony hy the 
return ships which set sail from Sagadehoc, 
Dec. 15, 1607, {0. S.) : "so soon as it came to 
Lord Chief Justice Popham's hands, he gave 
out order to the council for sending them hack 
with supplies necessary which being fur- 
nished and all things ready, only attending for 
a fair wind, which happened not before the 
news of the Chief Justice's death was posted 
to them." But Popham died June 10th, 1607, 
and had been " a mouldering in his grave " for 
many months before those return ships had 
left Sagadehoc; so that he did not receive 
tidings from his " colony," did not give orders 
for the supplies ; his quick interest and action 
as represented by Gorges' words *' so soon," 
is wholly a story of the imagination, for long 
ago summoned to his own dread account, not 
these things then troubled him ; " the 7iews of 
his death," so diligently "posted" to the 
wind-bound ships, was about a year old ; 
"news" which had greeted them on their 
return to England ; " news " not likely by 
them to be forgotten, the death of him who 
had banished the colonists for their country's 
good, and for whom they were then " prospect- 
ing " for " mynes " in America. Chief Justice 
Campbell {Lives of the Chief Justices of Eng- 
land, 1849, i. 209,) says that Popham "although 
at one time in the habit of taking purses on 
the highway,— instead of expiating his offen- 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



9 



ces at Tyburn, he lived to pass sentence of 
death upon highwaymen, and be a terror to 
evil doers all over the kingdom." 

"Sir John Popham, Knighte, Lord Chief 
Justice of England; and of the honourable 
privie counsel of Queen Elizabeth, and after 
to King James ; died the 10th of June 1607, 
and is here interred." Collinson's Hist, of 
Somerset^ li. 483. Harris' note to Hubbard's 
Hist. New Eng., 683. Maine Hist. Coll., ii. 77, 
where Gorges' ** Narration " is reprinted, with 
differences. 



B.— p. 3. 

In his exact and full account of Sir Ferdi- 
nando Gorges, Article xii. of "American Bi- 
ography," Dr. Belknap says, that to entertain 
a just view of his character we must consider 
him both as a member of the council of Ply- 
mouth, pursuing the general interests of 
American plantations, and at the same time, 
as an adventurer undertaking a settlement of 
his own grani of the Provitwe of Maine, eon- 
firmed by the King in 1639. " As this grant," 
says the historian Sullivan,* "is to be con- 
sidered as the origin of the western part of 
the District of Maine, the character of Sir 
Ferdinando may be connected with its his- 
tory." 

The jurist and statesman, Governor Sulli- 
van, studied the history of his native f State, 
and weighed the records, character and mo- 
tives of its founders with judicial discrimina- 
tion. 

Passing the details of the early life - of 
Gorges, not all to his credit,J Judge Sullivan 
says that he was "of an ancient but not opu- 
lent family ; and was no doubt urged by the 
poverty of his situation as compared with 
others of his rank, to undertake some adven- 
ture that might increase his rent roll.. . .pur- 
suing a system nearly allied to the feudal 
principles which had prevailed in Europe, 
and expected to enjoy the proiits at his ease 
without crossing the Atlantic... his expecta- 
tions were very great from the American Ad- 
venture but all his hopes were disappointed, 
and he finally complained of having spent 
twenty thousand pounds, and of having reap- 
ed only toil, vexation and disappointment ; 
that he was a man of great ambition, very 
avaricious, and very despotic, impatient under 
disappointment, and never considered a man 
of integrity. He wished to accumulate a 

» Hist. Dist. of Maine, 71, 73, 237. 
t Afnorifs Life of Sullivan, \., chap, ii., xvii. 
t But see his *' Defence " in Mr. Eolsom's valuable 
" Documents " relating to Maine, 109—137. 
2 



fortune, and to achieve a character. To per- 
petuate his reputation as Lord Proprietor, he 
gave the plantation of York the name of 
Gorgiana. He adhered to Charles and the 
royal side of the civil war." 



C— p. 3. 

The FIKST attempt. — Captain John Smith 
says, (Generall Historie, folios 15, 16,) after 
the failures by Sir Richard Greenville and 
White, " all hopes of Virginia thus aban- 
doned, it lay dead and obscured from 1590 
till this yeare 1602, that Captaine GosnoU, 
with 32 and himself in a small Barke,".... 
discovered Elizabeth's Isle...." Three weekes 
we spent in building vs there a house." 
Josselyn ( Voyages to New England, 1675, p. 
152,) says, ," The first English that planted 
there,.... Gosnold,.. 1602,. .set do\vn not far 
from the Narragansct Bay." pp. 207-213, he 
gives an account of " the people in the pro- 
vince of Main," in 1670. Hubbard {General 
History of New England, 1682, Harris' ed. 
1848, p. 10,) says, " All hopes of settling 
another plantation. ., .\s.y dead for the space 
of twelve years, .... when they were revived 
again by the valiant resolution and industry of 
Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold and Capt. Bar- 
tholomew Gilbert, . . . 1602.' ' Harris ( Voyages, 
London, 1725, i. 850,) says, " Captain GosnoU 
arrived first at the northern parts of Virginia, 
. . . .fixed his residence .... on Elizabeth island, 
...built a fort,"... aaA. speaks of " the affairs 
of the Plantation." Stith (Hist, of Virginia, 
1747, pp. 32, 35, 38,) says, " The project of a 
colony lay dead for nearly twelve years, when 
it was revived by Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, 
. . . .the fi,rst mover and projector of the whole 
business, .... who named Elizabeth's Island in 
honor to their ancient sovereign,.... Jwift a 
Jiouse, , . . resolved to stay, . . . obliged to leave." 
Hutchinson {Hist, of Massachicsetts, i. 9, 10,) 
Says, " I begin with the voyage of Bartholo- 
mew Gosnold, . . . 1602, who built a fort and 
intended a settlement." Bozmau {History of 
Maryland, i. 99-103, 125, 126,) says that after 
Raleigh's attempts, it was not until 1602.... 
that any voyage of importance was undertaken 

by the English to North America Gosnold 

sailed from Falmouth and at Buzzard's 

Bay. . . .found a fit place for a. plantation, built 
a fort and store house. . . .the voyage is said to 
have had important effects.... Hakluyt was 
induced to project in 1603 a similar voyage... 
through his unremitting endeavors, or, as 
some will have it, through the zeal and exer- 
tions of Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, who had 
made the successful voyage of experiment in 
1602, an association was formed in England 



10 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



to colonize some part of North America, .... 
and was chartered by the king, April 10, 1606. 
Brodhead {Rist. of Nmo York, pp. 6, 8, 71,) 
says, " The reign of Elizabeth did not termi- 
nate before another step had been taken in the 
path of American adventure .... Gosnold and 
Gilbert's voyage, 1602, .... they prepared to 

plant a colony twenty were to become 

planters.... South of the St. Lawrence, not a 
foot of American territory had yet been per- 
manently occupied by England or France.... 
Raleigh's enterprises and Gosnold's successful 
voyage had given a strong impulse to the na- 
tional spirit of Great Britain." 

Palfrey (Jlist. of New England, i. 73.) says 
that by Gosnold, in 1602, *' the ^rst attempt 
at European Colonization was made within 
what is now the State of Massachusetts." 
Folsom (Hist, of Saco and Biddeford, 1S30, 
pp. 9, 10,) says, " The discovery of New Eng- 
land may be justly ascribed to Bartholomew 
Gosnold.. 1602. .the colonists made prepara- 
tion for ^. permanent abode, built a store house 
and fort, the remains of which may still be 
seen.... from Florida to Greenland not one 
European family could be found." Willis 
{Hist, of Portland, in Maine Hist. Coll., i. 5,) 
says that prior to 1603 there had been made 
** three attempts to settle Virginia, and one 
in 1602, by Gosnold, to plant a colony on the 
Southern coast of Massachusetts." Belknap 
{American Biography, article, " Gosnold,") 
says, it was " t\ie first attempt to plant a colo- 
ny in North Virginia." Chief Justice Mar- 
shall, {Life of Washington, i., 20, 22,) says, 
" If any subsequent voyages were made by the 
English to North America, they were for the 
mere purposes of traffic, and were entirely un- 
important in their consequences, until the 
year 1602, when one was undertaken by Bar- 
tholomew Gosnold, which contributed greatly 
to revive in the nation the heretofore unsuc- 
cessful, and then dormant spirit of colonizing 
in the new world." Bancroft {Hist, of U. S., 
chap, iii.) says, *'in 1602 Bartholomew Gos- 
nold conceiving the idea of a direct voyage 

to America, with the concurrence of Raleigh, 
had well nigh secured to New England the 
honor of the first permanent English Colony 
....here, (on Elizabeth Island) they built 
their store house and their fort, and here the 
foundations of the first New England Colony 
were to be laid." The ruins of their fort are 
still visible. Belhiap^s Amer. Biog., Life of 
Gosnold. Barry's History of Mass., i., 11. 
Thornton's Landing at Cape Anne, 21. Pal- 
frey's Hist, of New England, i., 73. 



D.— p. 143. 

Gosnold intended a settlement. One of his 
colonists, Mr. John Brereton, published on 
his return to England in the same year, 1602, 
a " True Relation " of this " Discovery of the 
North part of Virginia," addressed to Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh, who held the territory by grant 
from Queen Elizabeth, and by whose *' per- 
mission " this attempt was made. Gabriel 
Archer, " a gentleman in said voyage," also 
wrote a " Relation" of the voyage, and from 
them we learn that " Captain Gosnold, with 
the rest of his company, being twenty in all," 
of whom were Brereton and Archer, were to 
" remain there for population," and that this 
"ourcompany of inhabitants," after "counsel 
about our abode and plantation, which was 
concluded to be on the west part of Elizabeth's 
Island"... "built a fort and made ready our 
house for the provision to be had ashore to 
sustain us till " the return of their bark the 
" Concord," Capt. Bartholomew Gilbert, with 
further supplies from England. But when, 
say they, " we divided the victuals, namely 
for the ship's stores for England, and that of 
the planters," the supply was found insuffi- 
cient, and the "company of inhabitants,".... 
" determined to return for England, leaving 
this island, (which Capt. Gosnold called Eliz- 
abeth's Island,) with as many true sorrowful 
eyes, as were before desirous to see it. ...When 
we came to an anchor before Portsmouth," 
(Gosnold's letter to his father,) " we had not 
one cake of bread, nor any drink, but a little 
vinegar left." 

We have also the testimony of another con- 
temporary, William Strachey, in his Historic 
of Travaile into Virginia, edited for the Hak- 
luyt Society, 1849, by R. H. Major, Esq., of 
which chapters v. vi. are devoted to GosnoU's 
expedition. Strachey says that after Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh's " five severall " unsuccessful 
attempts at Colonization, " for seventeen or 
eighteen yeares togeather, yt lay neglected, 
untill yt pleased God at length to move againe 
the heart of a great and right noble earle 
amongst us,... Henry Earle of Southampton, 
to take yt into consideration, and seriously 
advise how to recreat and dipp yt anew into 
spiritt and life ; who. . . .having well weighed 
the greatness and goodness of the cause, he 
lardgeley contributed to the furnishing out of 
a shipp to be comanded by Capt. Bartholomew 
Gosnoll and Capt. Bartholomew Gilbert, and 
accorapanyed with divers other gentlemen, 
to discover convenyent place for a new 
COLONY to be sent thither, who accordingly, 
in March, anno 1602, from Falmouth in a 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



11 



bark of Dartmouth, called the Concord, sett 
forward, holding a course for the north part 
of Virginia. ...Capt. GosnoU did determyne, 
•with eleven more besides himself, [Archer 
says twenty ,'] who promised to tarry with him^ 
to sitte doicne and fortefyCj purposing to send 
the pynnace home into England by Capt. Gil- 
bert, for new and better preparations, to be 
returned the next yeare againe, and for the 
same pitrpose he built a large /iOi/^e....much 
commended was the diligence and relation of 
Capt. GosnoU," which induced the Earl of 
Southampton *' with his brother in lawe Tho. 
Arundell, Baron of Warder " to send out 
"Weymouth on his voyage of 1605. *' Upon 
his returne, his goodly report joyning with 
Capt. GosnoU's, caused the business with soe 
prosperous and fair starres to be accompanied 
....ytwell pleased his majestie....to cause 
his letters to be made patent ... 10 April, 1606, 
....for two colonyes," the London and Ply- 
mouth colonies. Furchas' Pilgrims, iv., 1646 
—1653. Mass. Bist. Col., xxviii., 69—123. 



E.— p. 3. 
" Disastrous," because it placed the nation- 
ality of the country in the utmost hazard. 
The President and council of New England, 
in their Brief Relation, published in 1622, say, 
" Our people abandoning the plantation in 
this sort.... the Frenchmen immediately took 
the opportunity to settle within our limits, 
which being heard by those of Virginia, that 
discreetly took to their consideration the incon- 
veniences that might arise by suffering them 
to harbor there, they dispatched Sir Samuel 
Argall with commission to displace them, 
which he performed." Purchas' Pilgrims, 
iv., fol. 1828. The same is stated by Gorges' 
America painted to the Life, London, 1659, p. 
19. " They abandoned the colonic and re- 
turned for England in those ships that had 
been sent them with succours, at which unex- 
pected return, the Patrons of the desigue were 
so offended, that for a certaine time they de- 
sisted from their enterprises, in the mean 
while the French making use of this occasion, 
placed colonies in divers places, until such time 
as Argall coming from Virginia disturbed their 
designs, overthreio their Colonies, and brought 
away Prisoners, all he could lay hand on." 
Another says, "their coming home so dis- 
couraged all the first undertakers, that here 
seemed to be a full stop to the New England 
affair, and there was now no longer so much 
as any discourse about settling a plantation. 
The English thus, as it were, quitting their 
pretensions to that country, the French pres- 



ently came and made theirs, fixing themselves 
within our limits." 

Such was the sequence of this unhappy 
attempt by Chief Justice Popham, to cleanse 
England by colonizing the North with men 
"pressed to that enterprize, as endangered 
by the Law," yet, in opposition to these con- 
temporary official statements, Mr. Poore, in 
the Christian Mirror, September 16, 1862, 
ventures the assertion, that "the Popham 
settlement" actually "determined whether 
New England should pass under the dominion 
of Protestant England, or of Roman Catholic 
France." Further he styles it " the primal 
act of possession of the Country," nay, loftier 
yet, "the consummation of the title of England 
to the New World"! and thus asserts "its 
true historic position regardless of its theologi- 
cal character ; " why not add, and of its moral 
relations ! Now it is a matter of common school 
learning, that the '^primal act of possession," 
was by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in 1583, under 
his patent from Queen Elizabeth and Popham's 
attempt to realize at Sagadehoc, the jieculiar 
system of colonization "first invented" by 
him, was simply one of the intermediate and 
cumulative acts of possession, between 1583, 
and the permanent occupation at Jamestown 
in 1607, and at Plymouth in 1620, showing the 
intent of the English Crown to perfect the 
title by discover}', by possession. Johnson v. 
Mcintosh, 8 ^^^leaton's Rep., 583. Story's 
Commentaries on the Cotistittition, Chap. i. 
Kent's Commentanes, Lecture LI. 

As the mode of exercising the royal prerog- 
ative, whether by grants to individuals, as 
Gilbert, Raleigh, or Baltimore, or to resident 
Corporations, as the London, Plymouth, or 
Massachusetts Companies, could not touch 
the rights of their several colonies to protec- 
tion under the flag of England, all ultimately 
resting in the Crown, it is obvious that any 
pretence of superiority or significance, of one 
above another, by reason of these accidental 
differences, is wholly fallacious, as affecting 
their nationality. Thus the acts of possession 
by Gilbert, Gosnold or Popham, were of equal 
value, as instances of national jurisdiction. 



F.— p. 4. 
The real history of Segadahoek is given in 
"The Mapp and Description of NewJEngland," 
pp. 30—32, published in 1630 by Sir William 
Alexander, Earl of Stirling, the Patentee of 
Nova Scotia, who lived 1580-1640. {Alliione's 
Dictionary.) His interest in New England 
colonization was, he says " much encouraged 
by Sir Ferdinando Gorge and some others of 



12 



Cohnial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



the vndertakers for New England." His ac- 
count is that "Sir John Popham then Lord 
Chiefe lustice sent out the first company" 
[next after Gosnold's in 1602,] " that wont of 
purpose to inhabit there neer to Segadahoek, 
but those that went thither being jn'essed to 
that enterprize, as endangered by the Xo?p, or 
by their own necessities, no enforced thing 
proving pleasant, they after a Winter stay, 
dreaming to themselves of new hopes at 
home," [the Chief Justice, their " hanging 
judge " being dead,] " returned backe with 
the first occasion, and to iustifie the sudden- 
nesse of their returne, they did eoyne many 
excuses, burdening the bounds " [country] 
*' where they had beene with all the aspersions 
that possibly they could deuise, seeking by 
that meanes to discourage all others, whose 
prouident forwardnes importuning a good suc- 
cesse, might make their hasc shtggishnesse for 
abandoning the beginning of a good worke, to 
be the more condemned." Concurrent with 
this is the testimony of Anthony Wood, 1632 
—1695, Athente Oxonienses, ed. 1721, i., 342, 
ed. 1815, ii., 22, who says that Popham " ad- 
ministered towards malefactors with whole- 
some and available severity. ...for the truth 
is, the land in his day did swarm with thieves 
and robbers, whose {wages and courses he well 
widerstood when he 2cas a young man,) and 
that he ** was the first person. . . .who invented 
the plan of sending convicts to the plantations, 
which, says Aubrey, he ' stockt out of all the 
gaoles in England.' " 

Thomas Fuller, 1608—1661, an attentive ob- 
server of American affairs, and the reputed 
author of the " Holy and Profane State," 
16i2, says in the article " Of Plantations," 
" If the planters be such as leap thither from 
tlie gallows, can any hope for cream out of 
scum, when men send, as I may say. Christian 
savages to heathen savages ? It was rather 
bitterly than falsely spoken concerning one 
of our Western plantations, consisting most 
of dissolute people, that it was very like unto 
England, as being sjiit out of the rery mouth 
of it." The same author, in his Life of Pop- 
ham, Worthies of England, 1662, ed. 1811, ii. 
281, says that " in the beginning of the Reign 
of King James, his [Popbam's] Justice was 
exemplary on Theeves and Robbers. The 
land then swarmed with people who had been 
Souldiers, who had yuiver gotten (or else quite 
forgotten) any other vocation... idle mouthes 
which a former War did breed ; too proud to 
t'^SS^i too lazy to labour. These infected the 
Highwayes with their Felonies." 

Another biographer of Popham, (Lloyd, 



1635 — 1691, chaplain to Barrow, Bishop of St." 
Asaph,) States Worthies, ed. 1766, ii. 45-47, 
uses the language of Fuller, just quoted, and 
adds, " Neither did he onely punish malefac- 
tors, hut provide for them.... he first set zip 
the discovery of Neiv England to maintain and 
employ those that could not live honestly in the 
Old; being oi o^\u\OTit\i^\, banishment thither 
would be as well a more lawful, as a more 
eftectual remedy against those extravagan- 
cies ; the authors whereof judge it more eli- 
gible to hang than to work ; to end their days 
in a moment, than to continue them in pains," 
and then, citing a passage of history from 
Lord Bacon's Essay " Of Plantations," in the 
same connection with Popham and his con- 
vict colony, Lloyd concludes therewith, as 
follows : " Only a great Judgment [Bacon] 
observed, it is a shameful and an unblessed 
thing, to take the scum of people, and wicked 
and condemned men, to be the people with whom 
to plant ; and not onely so, biit it spoyleth the 
plantation, for they will live like rogues, and 
not fall to work, and do mischief, and spend 
victuals, and be quickly weary, and then cer- 
tifie over to the country, to the disgrace of 
the Commonwealth." 

Strachey dedicates his Historie to Lord 
Bacon as "ever approving himself a most 
noble fautour of the Virginian Plantation, 
being from the begining (with others Lords 
and Earles) of the principals Counsell applyed 
to propagate and g-uide yt," The article " Of 
Plantations" first appears in the edition of the 
" Essays," of 1625. Ellis & Speddin's ed. of 
Lord Bacon's Woriis. Even without the evi- 
dence of Lloyd that this passage had a special 
aim at the Popham Colony, the history fits so 
well in all its parts, as if made purposely for 
it, that none, familiar with the original but 
would admire thefidelity of the picture. These 
distinct and concurrent statements of Gorges, 
Alexander, and the several biographers of Pop- 
ham, as to the specific design of this Colony, 
and the character of the planters, present it 
inanew, curious and interesting light. Though 
transportation was not mentioned in the Stat- 
utes, eo twmijie, till the 18th Charles II., chap. 
3, by which the judges are authorized to trans- 
port the moss troopers of Cumberland and 
Northumberland to the settlements in Ameri- 
ca, not to the North, yet exile is generally 
supposed to have been introduced as a pun- 
i.=hment by the Statute 39th Elizabeth, 1598. 
Encyclopedia Metropolitana, xxv., 727 ; Enc. 
Brit. 1859, xviii., 576, art. Prison Discipline. 
Section xvi. of this statuteprovides that "Wan- 
dering Souldiers and Mariners, and all others 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



IS 



wandering as Souldiers or Mariners which will 
not settle themselves to work .... shall in all 
these cases suffer as Felons, without benefit 
of clergy." And section V. provides that in- 
corrigible rogues shall be banished "to such 
parts beyond the Seas, as shall by six or more 
of the Privy Council for that purpose be as- 
signed." Wingate's Abridgemmt, 1670, 558, 
660. This is the class of persons mentioned 
by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Maine Hist. Coll., 
ii. 16, — as furnishing "the reasons" for the 
Popham Colony, and for whose benefit, Lloyd 
says, Popham "invented the plan." He was 
appointed Chief Justice of the King's Bench, 
in 1592, and probably * the Statute was enact- 
ed at his suggestion. As far as known to 
Chalmers — Political Annals of America, 1781, 
p. 46, — this was first enforced in 1619, when 
King James wrote to the Treasurer and Coun- 
cil, commanding them " to send a hundred dis- 
solute persons to Virginia, whom the Knight 
Marshall shall deliver to them." Probably a 
more critical inquiry would have furnished 
Chalmers with earlier instances, as appears 
by the foregoing authorities. 

But such was not to be the unhappy fate of 
New England ; the winter at Sagadehoc was 
cold ; Gilbert, the " Admiral," hastened home 
to prove his brother's will ; Seymour, " the 
preacher," found, perhaps, a more hopeful 
charge; all hopes of "mynes," or gold, was 
dead ; Popham, the " President," was dead — 
Popham, the Judge, terrible to "vagabonds," 
was dead — and they of Sagadehoc, "pressed 
to that enferprize as endatigered hy the Law. . • 
suddenly abandoned " the country, leaving it 
to the nobler mission of the " May Flower," 
1620, the chosen theme of philosophers, states- 
men, poets, painters, and historians. Chief 
Justice Popham died June 10th, 1607, before 
any tidings from his " convicts " at Sagadehoc 
reached him, but the peculiar colonial policy, 
"invented" by him, happily and forever de- 
feated in the North, was fully adopted in the 
Southern Colony. 

In a work entitled " Nova Britannia, offer- 

* Since writing the above, an examination of 
D'Ewes' Journal of Parliament, fol. 531-543, more 
than confirms my conjecture, and shows that Popham 
himself was the real framer of the Act. It was be- 
fore Parliament two months, Dec. 5, 1597 — February, 
and after consideration by several Committees of Con- 
ference of the two Houses, which Chief Justice Pnp- 
hajn was " appointed to attend," specially in this 
matter and many Amendments which he was " re- 
quired to consider," *■ The Bill for Punishment of 
Rogues, Vagabonds, &c., was brought into the House 
by the Lord Chief Justice [Popham] with certain 
Amendments,'' &c. 



ing most Excellent fruites by planting in Yir- 
ginia," published in London in 1609, and dedi- 
cated to Sir Thomas Smith, " one of his Mai- 
esties Councell for Virginia," is this passage : 
as for " people to make the plantation wee 
neede not doubt ; our land abounding with 
swarms of idle persons, which having no 
meanes of labour to releeue their misery, doe 
likewise swarme in lewd and naughtie prac- 
tices, so that if we seeke not some waies for 
their forreine employment, we must prouide 
shortly more prisons and corrections for their 
bad conditions,. ...most profitable for our 
State, to rid our multiiudes of such as lie at 
home, pestering the land with pestilence and 
penury, and infecting one another with vice 
and villanie, worse than the plague itself: 
whose very miseries driues many of them, by 
meanes to be cutte off, as bad and wicked 
members, or else both them and theirs to be 
releeued at the common charge of others. 
Yet I do not meane, that none but such un- 
sound members, and such poore as want their 
bread, are fittest for this employment." 

Mr. Major in his preface to Strachey's Sis- 
torie, p. xxxii., gives a letter from " that rank 
' High-Churchman,' " Lord Delaware, in Vir- 
ginia, dated at " Jamestown, July 7, 1610," 
in which the writer speakes of the colonists as 
" men of such distempered bodies and infected 
mindes, whome no examples dayly before 
their eyes, either of goodness or punishment, 
can deter from their habitual impieties, or ter- 
rific from a shameful death." Chalmers, the 
historian, quotes the king's command in 1619 
" to send a hundred dissolute persons to Vir- 
ginia whom the knight marshall shall deliver." 
Capt. John Smith, in his New England's 
Trials, 1622, in a "digression" about Vir- 
ginia, says, " since I came from thence, the 
honorable Compan%j have bin humble suiters to 
his Maiestie to get vagaboruls and condemned 
men to go thither ; nay, so much scorned was 
the name of Virginia, some did chuse to be 
hanged ere they would go thither, and were.. • 
yet.... there is more honest men now suters 
to go, than ever hath bin constrained hnaves." 

Dr. John Donne, the poet. Dean of St. 
Paul's, in a sermon " preached to the Hon- 
ourable Company of the Virginian Plantation, 
13 November, 1622," 2d edition, London, 
1624, pp.21, 22, said, "the Plantation shall 
redeeme many a wretch from the Lawes of 
death, from the hands of the executioner. . .It 
shall sweepe your streetes, and wash your 
doores, from idle persons, and the children of 
idle persons, and imploy them; and truely, 
if the whole Countrey were hut such a Bride- 



i4 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



well, to force idle persons to work, it had a 
good vse. But it is alreadie not only a Spkene, 
to draytie the ill humors of the body " politic. 
Sir Josiah Cliild, in liis Discourse of tlie Trade 
of the Plantations, London, 1668, says that, 
'* Virginia and Barbadoes were Jirst peopled 
by a sort of loose vagrant People. ...had it 
not been for our Plantations, they must have 
come to be hang'd, or starved.... ox sold for 
soldiers.'* 

Such was the policy, the philanthropy, the 
people, which Popham had in view for the 
North, but God averted the evil. "The 
Planter's Plea," published in 16a0, in behalf 
of the Massachusetts Colony, considering 
" what persons may be fit to be employed in 
this worke of planting a colony," says, " It 
seemes to be a common and grosse errour, that 
Colonies ought to be Emunctories, or sinckes 
of States; to drayne away their filth,.... this 
fundamentall errour hath been the occasion of 
the miscarriage of most of our Colonies." 
The writer argues that the colonists should 
" bee of the more sufficiency, because the first 
fashioninrj of apoUticke body is a harder task 
than the ordering of that which is already 
framed," and such the Colonists of the North 
were. The abortion at Sagadahocke was the 
first, the last, the only attempt of the English 
corporation to fasten a moral pestilence on 
our northern shores. The deplorable results 
of the system in the South, are very mildly 
stated in Bancroft's Hist. TJ. S., vol. i., chap. 
xiv. John Randolph, of Roanoake, mourned 
over the ruin of its " aristocracy," effected by 
the legislation of Thomas Jefferson and Pat- 
rick Henry, in the Spirit of the Revolution. 



G— pp. 4, 6. 
Their story about suffering was discredited 
by Gorges and his associates. Mr. Sewall 
{Ancient Dominions of Maincy 93 — 95) speaks 
of their " lawlessness and recklessness " and 
finds " sufficient reason for their early depart- 
ure " in their outrages upon the natives ; in- 
deed, except those killed by the exasperated 
savages, only one, George Popham, died, but 
even that, says Gorges, " was not so strange, 
in that he was well stricken in years before he 
went, and had long been an infirm man. ... 
The miseries they had passed were nothing to 
that they suffered by the disastrous news of 
the death of the Lord Chief Justice " ! — Maine 
Hist. Coll., ii., 22. They returned in the very 
ships that were " sent to them, with succors," 
and which had " arrived in good season," 
" laden full of victuals, arms, instruments 
and tools," and when "all things were in 



good forwardness " in the colony. — Brodhead's 
Neio York, 14, 15, 64. Maine Hist. Coll., ii., 21, 
22. Mr. Folsom, of New York, pertinently 
remarks, " How superior was the spirit ex- 
hibited twelve years after by the Pilgrim emi- 
grants at Plymouth, nearly half of whose 
number perished within four months after 
their landing, yet animated by a settled relig- 
ious purpose, no one of the survivors enter- 
tained a thought of relinquishing their design. 
Had a tithe of their energy and resolute spirit 
animated the Kennebec colonists, whose re- 
sources were so much superior, a more grate- 
ful task might have awaited the pen that 
should relate the story of this enterprise. 
The Massachusetts colonists scarcely suffered 
a less mortality than the Pilgrims, although 
they arrived early in summer." — Discourse 
before the Maine Hist. Soc, 1846, Hist. Coll., 
ii., 31. The only direct report we have from 
the Colony is a letter of December 13, 1607, as 
follows ; " At the feet of His Most Serene 
King humbly prostrates himself George Pop- 
ham, President of the Second Colony of Vir- 
ginia.. ..if it may please you to keep open 
your divine eyes,.. ..there are in these parts 
....nutmegs and cinnamon,.... Brazilian co- 
chineal and ambergris, ....and these in great 
abundance. "(!) Your "admirable justice and 
incredible constancy. ...gives no small pleas- 
ure to the natives of these regions, who say 
moreover that there is no God to be truly 
worshipped but the God of King James, [not 
of the French,] under whose rule and reign 
they would gladly fight." With all this very 
credible information, the " most observant " 
Popham says nothing of " extremities " of 
cold ; perhaps a prudent silence, considering 
the " nutmegs and cinnamon.... in greatest 
abundance," in this latitude. The original, 
"in barbarous Latin," with translation, is in 
Maine Hist. Coll., v., 357—360. [See also 
note K.J 

H.— p. 4. 
In his Holy Warre, written in 1622, Lord 
Bacon, a good " churchman," says : " It can- 
not be affirmed (if one speak ingenuously) 
that it was propagation of the Christian faith 
that was the adamant of that discovery, en- 
try, and plantation, [of English America,] 
but gold, silver, and temporal profit and glory, 
so that what was first in God's providence, 
was but second in man's appetite and inten- 
tions." In his introduction to Strachey's 
Historic, Hakluyt Society, 1849, p. ix., Mr. 
Major says: "It is to be deplored, however, 
that gold, and not the permanent establish- 



Colmial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



15 



ment of the Colony, appears to have been the 
predominant incentive, inasmuch as accord- 
ing to Chalmers, the Company's instructions 
which were sent with this Expedition, impera- 
tively required that the interior should be ex- 
plored for gold ; and threatened that in the 
event of failure, the colonists ' should be al- 
lowed to remain as banished men in Virginia.' " 
Bancroft (Hist. U. S., i., ch. iv.,) says, " It 
was evident a commercial, not a colonial es- 
tablishment was designed by the projectors." 
So that Popham's simple idea of a mining 
speculation by enforced convict labor, as at- 
tempted at Sagadehoc in 1607, was a general 
characteriitic. Too much stress may be laid 
on their stereotyped professions of "true 
Eeal of promulgating God's holy church. . . .to 
be their sole interest." See Church of Eng- 
land and American Discovery, Portland, 1863, 
p. 5. 

I.— p. 4. 

In his Lives of the Chief Justices of England, 
ed. 1849, vol. i., pp. 209, 210, 219, 229, Lord 
Campbell, Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, 
devotes many amusing pages to Popham's 
memory. The biographer says : " It seems to 
stand on undoubted testimony that at this pe- 
riod of his life, [his thirtieth year] besides be- 
ing given to drinking and gaming, — either to 
supply his profligate expenditure, or to show 
his spirit, he frequently sallied forth at night 
from a hostel in Southwark, with a band of 
desperate characters, and that planting them- 
selves in ambush on Shooter's Hill, or taking 
other positions favourable for attack and es- 
cape, they stopped travellers, and took from 
them not only their money but any valuable 
commodities which they carried with them, — 
boasting that they were always civil and gen- 
erous, and that to avoid serious consequences, 
they went in such numbers as to render resis- 
tance impossible .... If Popham's raids had 
been a little later, they might have been im- 
puted to the First Part of Henry IV., which 
must have had at least as much effect as the 
Beggar's opera, in softening the horror excit- 
ed by highway robbery .... Although at one 
time in the habit of taking passes on the high- 
way, — instead of expiating his oficnces at Ty- 
burn, he lived to pass sentence of death upon 
highwaymen, and to be a terror to evil-doers, 

all over the kingdom He left behind him 

the greatest estate that had ever been amassed 
by any lawyer, but it was not supposed to be 
honestly come by, and he was reported even 
to have begun to save money when the ' Koad 
did him Justice.' .... His portrait represented 



him as a ' hudge, heavy, ugly man,' and I am 
afraid he would not appear to great advantage 
in a sketch of his moral qualities, which, lest 
I should do him injustice, I will not attempt. 
In fairness, however, I ought to mention that 
he was much commended in his own time for 
the number of thieves and robbers he convic- 
ted and executed He was notorious as a 

'hanging judge.' .... Both Lord Holt and 
Chief Justice Hyde considered his ' Reports ' 
as of no authority. We should have been much 
better pleased if he had given us an account 
of his exploits when he was Chief of a band of 
free-booters." Fuller, Worthies of England, 
1662, ed. 1811, ii., 284, says : " In his youthful 
dayes he was as stout and skilful a man at 
Szcord and Buckler, as any in that age, and 
7oild enough in his recreations," and signifi- 
cantly adds, "But, Oh! if Quicksilver could 
be really fixed, to what a treasure it would 
amount !" The concurrent testimony of wri- 
ters of all times renders but one verdict of his 
private and public life. Enc. Brit, xviii. 1859, 
article Popham. See also Barrington on the 
Statutes, 1796, 537. 



J.— p. 4. 
The late Macvey Napier, editor of the Bd- 
inburg Keview, in his admirable essay on Sir 
Walter Raleigh, reprinted, 1853, p. 185, says 
" The Lord Chief-Justice Popham, before pro- 
nouncing sentence, addressed Raleigh in one 
of those unwarrantable harangues, in which 
the elevation and impunity of the judgement- 
seat have often, in bad times and by unworthy 
natures, been taken advantage of to insult the 
defenceless. In particular, he adverted, in 
the ranting phraseology peculiar to such places 
and occasions, to an imputation which Raleigh 
seems, most unjustly, to have incurred, of be- 
ing an atheist. 'You have been taxed by the 
world,' said this dignified dispenser of Justice, 
* with the defence of the most heathenish and 
blasphemous opinion, which I list not to re- 
peat, because Christian ears cannot endure to 
hear them, nor the authors and maintainers 
of them be suffered to live in any Christian 
Commonwealth. You shall do well, before 
you go out of this world to give satisfaction 
therein ; and let not Harriot or any such doc- 
tor persuade you there is no eternity in heaven, 
lest you find an eternity of hell torments.' 
The man thus maligned is the author of some 
of the most striking observations in the lan- 
guage on the being and attributes of the Deity, 
the grandeur and immortality of the soul, and 
the Christian religion. The other object of 
this barbarous attack — the more barbarous as 



16 



Colonial Schemes of PopMm and Gorges. 



being directed against an absent and uncon- 
cerned individual— has left a distinguished 
name in the annals of scientific discovery. 
Their robed accuser, who was doubtless told 
by his flatterers that he had acquitted himself 
nobly in administering such a rebuke, is only 
remembered by the anecdote hunters of his 
day as having, in his earlier years, been a 
taker of purses, and in those of his judicial 
life, a taker of bribes!" Stith's Virginia, 
1747, p. 75, speaks of him as "memorable to 
all posterlfy for his infamous partiality and in- 
justice in the trial of Sir "Walter Raleigh." 

K— p. 4. 

"It discotjkaged Colonization." 
Capt. John Smith, {Gen. Hist. fol. 20i,) 
says: "Thus this plantation was begunne 
and ended in one yeare, and the Country es- 
teemed as a cold, barren, rocky De5art....for 
any plantations there was no more speeches." 
" The arrival of these people here in England 
was a wonderful discouragement to all the 
first undertakers, insomuch as there was no 
more speech of settling any other plantations 
in those parts for a long time after." Phjm- 
outh Council's Relation, 1622, in Mass. H. C. 
xix. 2. "The country was denounced as 
uninhabitable Gorges was unable to per- 
suade the Company to undertake the planting 
of a second colony." Folsom's Saco and Bid- 
deford, 22. It " raised prejudices against the 
Northern coast, which checked the spirit of 
colonization and discovery, and threw back 
the settlement of the coast for a number of 
years." Willis' Portland in Maine, Hist. Col. 
7. "The last unsuccessful attem-pt." Palfrey's 
New England, i, 78. " Checked for a season 
the ardor of the Plymouth Company." Bar- 
ry's Massachusetts, i. 18. " Their disappointed 
principals, vexed with their pusillanimity, 
desisted for a long time after from any further 
attempts at colonization. .. .in fact, no subse- 
quent English colonization ever took place 
under the Plymouth Company." Brodhead's 
New York, 14, 15, 64 : see also note G. 

L.— p. 5. 
Chief Justice Marshall (Introduction to the 
Life of Washington, i., 86-98,) says that " To 
lreligion'\ a stronger motive than even inter- 
est, a motive found to be among the most 
powerful which can influence the human 
mind, is New England indebted for its first 
establishment. A sect obnoxious by the de- 
mocracy of its tenets respecting church gov- 
ernment. -exasperatedby a privation of those 
blessings derived from the complete enjoy- 
ment of the rights of conscience, and the full 



exercise of all the powers of self-government. . 
religion stimulated them to emigrate from 
their native land and constituted the first ob- 
ject of their care in the country they had 

adopted they discarded all ceremonies 

deemed useless the cold was severe, the 

privations almost universal.... in the course 
of the winter nearly half their number per- 
ished... .the fortitude of the survivors was 
not shaken, nor were their brethren in Eng- 
land deterred from joining them. Religion 
supported the colonists under all their difii- 
culties ; and the then intolerant spirit of the 
English hierarchy, at the head of which was 
placed the rigid Laud, exacting a strict con- 
formity to its ceremonies, diminished, in the 
view of the Puritans in England, the dangers 
and the sufi'erings to be encountered in Ame- 
rica, disposed them to forego every other hu- 
man enjoyment, for the consoling privilege 
of worshipping the Supreme Being according 
to their own opinions." 

Hildreth (History of the United States, i., 
158,) says, " The whole of North America, as 
claimed by the English, was thus divided into 
the two provinces of New England and Vir- 
ginia, by a line of demarkation very nearly 
coincident with that which still separates the 
slaveholding from the non-slaveholding states. 
Not, however, by the wealthy and powerful 
Council for New England, but by a feeble band 
of obscure religionists was the first permanent 
settlement made within the limits of this new 
province." 

Sir Ferdinando Gorges' Brief Relation, in 
Maine Hist. Coll., ii., 41, the chief in these 
affairs, says, that to the Virginia Company, 
hopeless and impoverished, and " forced to 
hearken to any propositions," it was suggested 
" how necessary it was that means might be 
used to draic into these enterprises some of 
those families that had retired themselves 
into Holland for scruples of conscience," and 
that their one condition precedent was " giv- 
ing them such freedom and liberty as might 
stand with their likings." Major, Introduc- 
tion to Strachey's Historic, xix., says, "It 
was not till after 1620, after so many abortive 
efforts had been mad^i both by Government and 
poicerful bodies, to form an establishment in 
North Virginia, that at length it received, 
under unexpected circumstances, an influx of 
settlers, which soon rendered it by far the 
most prosperous of all the colonies in North 
America. This was the emigration of a large 
[small] band of Puritans, who suffering under 
the intolerance of the English government, 
(m account of mnconformity, first passed into 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



17 



Holland, and afterwards found an asylum in 
America. Hutchinson, (History of Mass., 
1767, ed. 1795, ii., 412,) says, " The settlement 
of Plymouth occasioned the settlement of 
Massachusetts, which was the source of all 
the other colonies of New England. Virginia 
was in a dying state, and seemed to revive 
and flourish from the example of New Eng- 
land. I am not preserving the names of he- 
roes, whose chief merit is the overthrow of 
cities, provinces and empires, but the names 
of the founders of a flourishing town, and 
colony, if not of the whole British empire in 
America." 

Milton, {Of Reformation in England, 16il, 
in Works, Bohn's ed., 1848, ii., 399,) says: 
" What numbers of faithful and freeborn 
Englishmen, and good Christians, have been 
constrained to forsake their dearest homes, 
their friends and kindred, whom nothing but 
the wide ocean, and the savage deserts of 
America could hide and shelter from the fury 
of the bishops f 0, sir, if we could but see 
the shape of our dear mother England, as 
poets are wont to give a personal form to 
what they please, how would she appear, think 
ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon 
her head, and tears abundantly flowing from 
her eyes, to behold so many of her children 
exposed at once, and thrust from things of 
direst necessity, because their consciences 
could not assent to things which the bishops 
thought indiSerent .' What more binding 
than conscience? what more free than indif- 
ferency ? " Robertson, {History of America, 
Book X.) says: "The Puritans maintained 
that the rites of the established Church 
were inventions of men, superadded to the 
simple and reasonable service required in the 
Word of God ; that from the excessive solici- 
tude with which conformity to them was 
exacted, the multitude must conceive such an 
high opinion of their value and importance, as 
might induce them to rest satisfled with the 
mere form and shadow of religion, and to 
imagine that external observance may com- 
pensate for the want of inward sanctity ; that 
ceremonies which had been long employed by 
a Society manifestly corrupt, to veil its own 
defects, and to seduce and fascinate mankind, 
ought now to be rejected as relics of super- 
stition unworthy of a place in a church which 
gloried in the name of Itefor>ned....The de- 
sire of a further separation from the Church 
of Rome spread wide through the nation,... 
as all their motions were carefully watched, 
both by the Ecclesiastical and Civil Courts, 
which, as often as they were detected, punished 
3 



them with the utmost rigour, a bevy of them, 
weary of living in a continual state of danger 
and alarm, fled to Holland." In America 
" the privilege olprofessinc/ their ovm opinions, 
and of being governed by laws of their oton 
framing, afforded consolation to the colonists 

amidst all their dangers and hardships 

Their system of civil governynent was founded 
on those ideas of the natural equality among 
men, to which their ecclesiatioal pol- 
icy HAD ACCUSTOMED THEM." 

Daniel Webster said, in 1820, commemo- 
rating the landing of the Pilgrims, 1620, 
" Before they reached the shore, they had 
established the elements of a social system, 
and, at a much earlier period, had Settled 
their forms of religious worship. At the 
moment of their landing, therefore, they pos- 
sessed institutions of government, and insti- 
tiitio7is of religion ; and friends and families, 
and social and religious institutions, estab- 
lished by consent, founded on choice and 
preference, how nearly do these fill up our 
whole idea of country ! The morning that 
beamed on their first night of repose, saw 
the Pilgrims established in their country. 
There were political institutions, and civil 
liberty, and religious worship. Poetry has 
fancied nothing, in the wanderings of heroes, 
so distinct and characteristic. Here was man, 
indeed, unprotected and unprovided for, on 
the shore of a rude and fearfnl wilderness : 
but it was politic, intelligent and educated 
man. Everything was civilized but the phy- 
sical world. Institutions containi7ig in sub- 
stance all that ages had done for human gov- 
ernment, were established in a forest. Culti- 
vated mind was to act on uncultivated nature ; 
and more than all, a government and a coun- 
try were to commence with the very first 
foundations laid under the divine light of the 
Christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy 
futurity ! Who would wish that his country's 
existence had otherwise begun." Even Hurae 
( Hist, of Englaml, v. 134,) says, "The pre- 
cious spark of Liberty had been kindled and 
was preserved by the Puritans alone; and 
it was to this sect that the English owe the 
whole freedom of their constitution." These 
ideas, inaugurated in the New World by the 
" solemn combination as a body politic," in the 
cabin of the May Flower, the Ark of American 
Liberty, were endorsed by the People, July 4, 
1776, and are now reaffirmed, as for " all 
men," in this second birth of the Nation, Jan- 
uary 1, 1883, the logical sequence of the first. 
But Chillingworth thinks it not " charity to 
cloy the reader with uniformity, when the 



18 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



subject affords variety," and so we add that 
this view of the Puritans and Puritan emi- 
gration to the North, uniformly concurred in 
by philosophers, historians and statesmen, of 
different opinions, lands and eras, has been 
recently controverted, with equal modesty, 
learning, and courtesy, by the Hon. John A. 
Poor, the Orator of the Popham Celebration. 
He says, (Christian Mirror, Portland, Sept. 
22, 1862,) "It is a stale assumption,.... an 
absurd notion, long since exploded,... .that 
the British race owe to them [the Puritans] 
the great principles of civil and religious 
liberty. ...that they pretended to flee from 
England for liberty of conscience,..., came to 
America not to enjoy religious freedom,.... 
without any design of forming a government, 
and with no purpose originally except trade 
and fishing, .... the pretence that their objects 
[at Plymouth] were different from those that 
came to Sagadehoc, or that they were influ- 
enced by higher motives, is an arrogant as- 
sumption, unworthy of credence by any en- 
liffhtened mind," and then modestly avers 
that " if there is any truth more clearly estab- 
lished at this day, than any other, it is this, 
that the motives and purposes of the Popham 
colony were higher than those of the Plymouth 
settlers, or of the Massachusetts Puritans." 
Here is sufficient confidence, but the evidence 
is quite invisible; and naked assertion, with- 
out proof, is impertinent. In his " Oration," 
Mr. Poor quotes Sir "William Alexander, that 
Popham " sent the first company [next after 
Gosnold's of 1602] that went to inhabit there 
neere to Sagadehoc," but suppresses the rest 
of the very pertinent and significant sentence, 
showing the distinctive and peculiar character 
of Popham's scheme, that they were *^ pressed 
to that enterprize as endangered hy the law, or 
their necessities, enforced," &c., yet the Ora- 
tor warmly affirms of the '* Celebration," that 
its ^^ only ptirpose was to give the Popham 
colony its t'i'ue historic position, regardless of 
its theological character." Certainly the sup- 
pressed fact, known to the Orator, to whom 
all looked for the truth, was the great essen- 
tial feature of Popham's scheme, and could 
be justly offensive to no lover of truth, not to 
those whose ^* only purpose was to give the 
Popham colony its true historic position," and 
its suppression can hardly be deemed in har- 
mony with the spirit of a purely historical 
occasion, free from the infection of party, the 
ruffle of passion, that " hateth the light." 
Doubtless the suppression was an iiiadvertence, 
yet very extraordinary, much as to present 
Hamlet w*^ ^amlet left out; for the^ac^, 



however trifling or unsatisfactory to the Ora- 
tor*s mind, contained the moral that would 
most affect his audience. 

Its *' Theological Character." — Upon 
the presumption that colonists speak the lan- 
guage and take with them the institutions of 
the mother-land, the worship at Wagadahoc, 
as at the prior colony of Gosnold, 1602, must 
have been of the English Ritual as then en- 
forced by the Court of High Commission,* or 
prior to Laud's improvements or alterations. 
"Would not Popham's exemplary and scrupu- 
lous life, and the atoning zeal of his later days 
against crime, dissent and Puritanism, even 
unto death, lead him to exclude from his be- 
loved fold any disciple of Paul, heretic, schis- 
matic, or other "fellow persuading men to 
worship God contrary to Law " ? Ought not 
the peculiai character and previous history of 
his hopeful colonists to effectually relieve them 
from suspicion of the taint of Puritanism ? 
Still the silence of Strachey on this point, 
painful to recent denominational aspiration 
for historical position in American annals, 
has prompted learned research as to the exact 
legal form of worshiping God, duly authorized 
in this initial enterprise of English deporta- 
tion for crime. It is a conspling thought that 
their worship was probably not only legally 

* Differing not in character was the t^tar Chamber 
Court, of which Lord Clarendon's History i^ays, " the 
foundations of right were never more in danger to 
be destroyed," ''for which reason," {BlacJcstone's 
Commentaries, iv., ch. 19, 33,) "it was finally abol- 
ished," by the Puritans, " to the general joy of the 

whole nation." The just odium into which this 

fcribuoal had fallen before its dissolution, has been, 
the occasion that few memorials have reached ub of 
its nature. . .except such as on account of their 
euormous oppression are recorded in the histories of 
the times... It was armed with powers the most 
dangerous and unconstitutional, over the persons 
and properties of the subject." In 1769, one of the 
Judges on the King's Bench, (iv. Burrow^s Rep., 
2373, 5,) rebuked counpel for citing the " edicts of 
that imperious Court " which by " the terrors of their 
authority. . .supported outrages that no body could 
submit to. . .a Court, the very name whereof is suf- 
ficient to blast all precedents brought from it." 
Yet there is extant a denominational class of writers 
who affect respect fur it, as if for an ancient ally ; the 
llev. John Cotton, perhap.'i the most venerable name 
of our colonial period, narrowly escaped the Star- 
Chamber terrors, and his recent biographer, as if less 
in sympathy with his great subject than with the 
infamous tribunal, speaks of it as that "once hon- 
ored but now maligned court'' ! f^The Church Monthly, 
1863, p. 45.) With happy judgment, of equal value, 
the unclean Bonner and Gardiner may yet be named 
as those " once honored but noio maligjied^ bishops." 
The drift is that way. 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. 



19 



done, but that the "preacher," Richard Sey- 
mour, may have been a cadet of the " ducal " 
house of Somerset, a possibility no doubt 
helpful to their devotions ; much as Izaak 
Walton commended the fish, — " I would have 
you take notice of it, because it is a rarity, 
and of so high esteem with persons of great 
note." 

Though wanting direct proof, the premises 
admit, of course, of no moral doubt, that 
Popham's colonists, though here because they 
" were endangered by the Law " at home, 
were very intelligent, scrupulous and unflinch- 
ing defenders of the " Apostolic succession," 
men so devout that they ** would have periled 
the very existence of the company," rather 
than yield an iota of their "high and holy 
faith " in sacerdotal vestments, and simple 
arithmetic proves that this notably religious 
company of " missionaries " visited Sagade- 
hoc, exactly " thirteen years before the landing 
of the colony on Plymouth Rock ;" a splendid 
precedence. 

Strachey's Historie has been disparaged by 
Mr. Perry as a " second hand.... account of 
their proceedings," because he makes " no 
special mention " of " the Episcopal character 
of both preacher and people," but, we say, 
note rather that but for Strachey's " special 
mention " of " sermon " and " preacher," the 
presumption, from the bad character of Chief 
Justice Popham, and his convict people, would 
be that they had no religion at all, unless of 
compulsory formalities. Mr. Perry admits 
the " doubt " in the case, yet with resolution 
goes so far as to give " the very words made 
use of [?] 255 years ago by Richard Seymour, 
Presbyter of the Church of England." May 
be, may be not ; Strachey does not say it. 
Again, that Seymour was " a Presbyter of the 
Church of England" must rest oti. proof, not 
on assertion. Strachey does not say it. But, 
suppose he was, still he may have had a Ge- 
nevan, not an Episcopal ordination, as Parlia- 
ment and the Head of the Church in her wis- 
dom had recognized its validity — (Hopkins' 
Puritans and Queen Elizabeth, " ordination ") 
— perhaps with reason, for Chillingworth 
" proved it plainly impossible that any man 
should be so much as morally certain, either 
of his own priesthood or any other man's," by 
Episcopal ordination, in which uhcertainty 
those " miserable sinners " at Sagadahoc 
might, as Chillingworth says, " have the ill 
luck to be damned." (Religion of Protestants, 
Bohn's edit., 1846, 115—117, 448. Perry's 
Church of England and American Coloniza' 
tion, Portland, 1863, p. 6.) 



The words " preacher "' and " sermon," not 
" homily," certainly have a tinge of Puritan- 
ism, {Maine Hist. Coll. v., 160,) as the distin- 
guishing protestant Christian element of the 
times. Thus in Strype's Life of Grindal, (B. 
i., chap, xvi., B. ii., chap, viii., and appendix 
ix.,) we find the petition of some of the London 
Separatists, in 1569 : — " certaine of us poor 
men of this city were kept in prison one whole 
year.... because we would serve our God by 
the rule of his holy word, without the vain and 
wicked ceremonies and traditions of Papistry 
... and hear such preachers whoin we liked best 
of in the city. ...By these means we were 
driven at the first to forsake the churches and 
to C07igregate in our houses." Grindal " well 
perceived the ignorance of the clergy, and the 
great need there was of more frequent preach- 
ing for the instruction of the people in the 
grounds and truths of religion,. . .in the know- 
ledge of the Scriptures," but his Puritan sym- 
pathy was " sharply " rebuked by the Head 
of the Anglican Church, for she declared to 
him, " it was good for the Church, [if not for 
the people,] to have few preachers, and that 
three or four might suffice for a county ; the 
reading of the homilies to the people was 
enough. ...and commanded him "\.o abridge 
the number of preachers and put down the rC' 
ligious exercises.^* She, heedless of his mem- 
orable and excellent letter (Dec. 20, 1576) to 
her that ^^ public and continual preaching of 
God's word is the ordinary mean and instru- 
ment of the salvation of mankind," " wrote to 
the Bishops throughout England," (May 8, 
1577,) to imprison and " sharply " punish 
these offenders as " maintainers of disorders ', " 
so the Puritans suff'ered. At the Hampton 
Court Conference, 1604, the Puritan Dr. Ray- 
nolds " prayed that all Parishes might be fur- 
nished with preaching ministers," upon which 
Bancroft, Bishop of London "fell upon his 
knees. ...and humbly prayed that the clergy 
might be obliged to read homilies instead of 
sertnons, which have grown so much in fashion 
that the service " [Papistry] " of the Church 
is neglected, and pulpit harangues are very 
dangerous." (Neal's Puritans, ed. 1843, i., 
230—232.) 

The books abound in such illustrations of 
the fierce hostility of the dominant Anglican- 
" Catholic " hierarchy to the free study of 
the Scriptures by the people and " clergy." 
A "church" writer, eulogized by his sect, 
says " the peculiarities of Puritanism. . .it was 
in short the Protestantism of England. . .were 
more or less remotely connected with the un- 
restricted use of the Holy Scriptures.... the 



20 



Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges, 



cause of all manner of infidelity. Piotestant- 
ism trained its c?iildren into infidelity , The 
j5M/j9ii....in the Puritan Sanctuary.... swal- 
lowed up altar, priest and sacrifice.... the 
preacher was regarded above the priest, the 
sermon above the sacrament." (Oliver's Pu- 
ritan Commonwealth, 159, 398, 486-493.) Yet 
a recent profound critic impeaches the sen- 
tence — '* \)a.G ■p^'eacher and the sermon already 
detested in England," 1607, as " a loose state- 
ment," because forsooth, " preachers " are 
named ip the '* formularies " of that denomi- 
nation, and Latimer preached at Paul's cross. 
(Perry's " Church of England and Amei'ican 
Colonization^^ Portland, 1863, p. 7.) Be- 
cause of his ** sermons," Latimer expired in 
the flames kindled by the Romish hierarchy, 
exclaiming, *' We shall this day light such a 
candle by God's grace in England^ as I trust 
shall not be put out.'" The Puritans fed that 
holy light of Christian Liberty by their ser- 
monsy which the Anti-thinking, Anti-Puritan, 
Anglican-Roman hierarchy as heartily "de- 
tested," as the Papal hierarchy hated Lati- 
mer's preaching ; and keeping alive the fires 
of Smithfield, as late as 1611, four years after 
the abortion at Sagadehoc in 1607, they there 
burnt alive Bartholomew Legate, " of unbla- 
mable conversation," because he •' searched 
the Scriptures daily whether those things were 
so," and, like Paul, worshiped God *' after 
the way which they called heresy." (Brooks' 
Puritans, i. 66.) Chillingworth says they in- 
vented " devices how men may worship im- 
ages ■without idolatry, and kill innocent men, 
under pretence of heresy, without murder." 

Puritanism quenched those prelatical fires. 
The Pilgrim, mighty and obedient in the 
Scriptures, landed at Plymouth, and his ideas 
rule evermore. 

The established automatic " reader '* of 
drowsy " homilies " landed in "Virginia, with 
the ** upholstery of holiness," solemn sights 
and heavenly sounds, where Governor Berke- 
ley, known as a rigid and consistent " church- 
man," wished his clergy ** would pray oftener 
and preach less y.AoY learning has brought 
disobedience and heresy and sects into the 
world, and printing has divulged them...- 
Thank God here are no free schools nor print- 
ing, and I hope we shall not have, these hun- 
dred years." In 1683, Governor Effingham's 
order was " to allow no person to use a print- 
ing-press on any occasion whatsoever." Their 
apt successor. Governor Giles, was equally 



earnest against the education of the people. 
(Rich?nond Enquirer, Jan. 1818.) The disease 
was hereditary. (Thomas' Hist, of Printing^ 
ii. 142,148.) 

Not to the hierarchal "reader "of homi- 
lies, but to the Huguenot, the congener of 
the Puritan, belongs, it is said, the noble 
record of the first Christian worship, and the 
first Christian chapel in New England, at 
Neutral Island, 1604, and thus this great 
distinction belongs to the Annals of Maine. 
Maine Hist. Coll., vi., 175 3. 



Inscriptions at Fort Popham, translated. 

** The First Colony 

ON THE Shores of New England 

vfAs founded here, 

AuGrsT 19th, 0. S., 1607, 

UNDER George Popham." 

** In memory of 
GEORGE POPHAM, 

"WHO FIRST FROM THE SHORES OF ENGLAND 
FOUNDED A CoLONY IN NeW ENGLAND, 

August, 1607. 

He brought into these wilds 

English laws and learning, and the 

Faith and the Church op Christ. 

He only, of the Colonists, 

AND IN HIS old AGE, DIED 
ON THE 5tH of THE FOLLOWING FEBRUARY, 

and was buried near this spot. 

Under the auspices of 

The Maine Historical Society, 

In THE Fort bearing his name, 

August 29, 1862, 

In THE presence of many citizens, 

This stone was placed." 



[NOTE — With what utter astonishment and incre- 
dulity would this memorial strike that interesting 
company of banished men, " pressed to that enter- 
prize as endangered by the Law," and as enemies to 
society at home, and animated solely by *' the hope of 
mynes," or their great exemplar a.n^ " patron," Chief 
Justice Popham ! Is there not reason to believe that 
the Maine Historical Society could not, and did not 
intend to, give its imprimatur to 5«c/i a statement, 
as true either in fact or spirit, — that it was by some 
mishap that they should seem to sanction formally, 
or tacitly, such an historical infelicity ? I should 
think myself wanting in that respect which I owe to 
the Society, and in their loyalty to historic truth, if 
I did not submit to the Society's judgment the facts 
and authorities here presented at large, and upon 
which this note is based. — J. W. T.] 



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